By Colin Horan, Strategic Partner, FMCG, Bauer Media Outdoor
Retail Media is having its moment. Spend is growing, the forecasts are hard to ignore, and barely a conference goes by without it taking centre stage.
But for all the momentum, the conversation has a gap. The growth is largely an online story, and for grocery brands in particular, this has created a blind spot around the channel that still drives the vast majority of purchase decisions: the supermarket.
In the UK, just 8% of shoppers (less than a tenth) shop for groceries exclusively online, and 36% shop both online and in-store, while 55% of shoppers buy exclusively in-store. Taken as a whole, this means that 92% of UK grocery shoppers can be reached with messaging in stores – but more than half are off-limits to online advertising.
Digital media has conditioned the industry to chase efficiencies, and online retail media delivers that neatly. However, in the pursuit of precision, we’ve lost sight of where most grocery decisions are actually made.
This means it’s time to talk about supermarket Digital Out of Home (DOOH).
How supermarket DOOH is transforming the supermarket
Supermarket aisles have long been alive with vivid brand messaging, from eye-catching endcap displays (those very visible units at the end of an aisle) to discounts and special offers.
In the digital age, supermarket DOOH and digital signage are opening new possibilities for reaching shoppers with advertising messages. Messaging can be targeted, contextually relevant, and even respond in real time to factors such as time of day or cultural moments shaping everyday life.
What’s more, supermarkets offer a golden combination of high dwell time, repeated exposure, all but guaranteed footfall, and engaged audiences browsing at the point of making a purchase.
Not only should marketers make the most of this opportunity, but they should also do so in ways that lean into the unique potential of physical shopping environments. Rather than the task-oriented, list-driven mindset, shoppers are often open to inspiration. Sometimes they’re there for a quick impulse purchase; other times, they want to explore and discover. Regardless of the shopping mission, supermarket DOOH can influence those in market for a particular category, or divert shoppers into aisles they weren’t planning to visit.
Either way, they’ll be open to the right message delivered at the right moment, something that supermarket DOOH is enabling with increasing sophistication.
How supermarket DOOH can deliver across the full funnel
It’s not only about influence at the moment of purchase, of course.
In today’s cost-pressured environment, brand-building is absolutely key for FMCG brands to avoid being caught in a price war with own-label alternatives. The stronger the brand, the more weight they carry with consumers, and the more power they have to defend its position without compromising on price.
But accomplishing this doesn’t have to mean sacrificing lower-funnel deliverability.
Traditional Out of Home (OOH) advertising, with its unique scale and prominence, offers visibility, reach, and brand fame. DOOH then introduces additional potential for targeting and contextual responsiveness, as we’ve just explored.
Bring that into a retail environment, and you have a format that’s capable of bridging upper-funnel brand building and lower-funnel action and conversion. Brands can achieve storytelling and awareness, particularly in those all-important entrance locations within supermarkets, along with influence – all within the same customer journey.
Retail media is highly valued precisely for its potential to deliver on the bottom of the funnel; bringing it to supermarkets doesn’t mean sacrificing that. Instead, it offers the capacity to layer upper-funnel capabilities on top – reaching not just in-market shoppers, but the light category buyers that are so often overlooked by targeted retail media, and who are critical to long-term growth for FMCG brands.
As such, supermarkets have become more than just retail environments. With almost 17 visits a month per British household, they are part of consumers’ everyday routines, serving as a key touchpoint for brands to engage directly with their audience.
Changing the conversation around supermarket DOOH
Despite this strategic value, supermarket media is often siloed from other media channels: passed off to sales teams and handled apart from brand conversations, rather than activated in concert with other media spend.
This leads to supermarket media being activated tactically rather than strategically, evaluated on short-term sales metrics alone, and excluded from broader campaign planning discussions.
To truly tap into its potential, marketing teams need to consider supermarket DOOH at the very beginning of campaign planning rather than treating it as a tactical add-on further down the line. To break down the silos around supermarket DOOH, first, it needs to not be treated as if it exists within a separate universe to the rest of media planning. Instead, it should be recognised for its pivotal role within a broader strategic media ecosystem.
As supermarket DOOH becomes a firmly established part of the grocery shopping environment, now is the time to capitalise on its potential and award it the same importance that UK shoppers already accord it.
The conversation about retail media shouldn’t be framed as physical versus digital. Instead, there needs to be recognition of the different roles each environment plays in influencing consumers and how brands can tap into the moments it offers.
As advertisers search for more effective, accountable, and attention-rich media environments, supermarkets deserve to be recognised not as a secondary retail touchpoint, but as a core part of modern media planning.
